Cook County officials balk at warehouse fix

$34 million in repairs wouldn't meet long-term goals

July 29, 2012|By John Byrne, Tribune Reporter

Jeff Tobolski suggested that repairing the warehouse is such a waste that the county should simply “light the money on fire and throw it out the county window.” (Terrence Antonio James, Chicago Tribune)

During the past eight years, Cook County has sunk $26 million into buying and repairing an aging West Side warehouse where it stores a massive number of documents involving court cases and other matters of public record.

But the 475,000-square-foot building — the size of nearly four Target stores — needs more than twice that space to modernize the place.

That's led to a debate in county government about whether it's better to spend to fix up what's already there or to rent space elsewhere.

On one side is Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown, who for years has wanted to refurbish the Hawthorne Warehouse in North Lawndale to deal with the heavy burden of keeping paper copies of legal files her office must in some cases hold on to in perpetuity.

Brown sees the sprawling former Western Electric factory and CTA facility as her best chance at setting up "a professional record storage facility," according to Fred Moody, the associate clerk for facility and records management.

On the other are some county commissioners, including Jeff Tobolski, D-McCook, who suggested that repairing the warehouse is such a waste that the county should simply "light the money on fire and throw it out the county window."

"It has been a thorn in the side of county government since it was bought and we began restoration," Tobolski said.

The latest proposal has been playing out for the past several weeks. County Board President Toni Preckwinkle's staff presented a $34 million plan to upgrade the facility July 10.

But Preckwinkle is reluctant to make such a sizable additional investment in the warehouse, especially since her capital investment team thinks Hawthorne will be full in about seven years. So her staff pulled the proposal off the table at the County Board's July 23 meeting.

The Preckwinkle administration instead will try to figure out the best way to handle the county's wide-ranging storage needs as part of an overall look at the problem. They hope to have that report finished by the end of the year.

Under then-board President John Stroger, the county bought Hawthorne for $8.7 million in 2004. Another $18 million has been spent to install security cameras, repair the roof, resurface the floor, modernize the elevators and replace the fire safety systems.

The latest proposal would add office space and other amenities so Brown could staff the place with about 100 employees now working at storage sites around the county. It would be more efficient and would save the county money compared with paying for leases to rent several smaller locations, Moody said.

County Clerk David Orr also keeps voting machines there, and the public defender's office and county Bureau of Health have files in the warehouse too.

Other County Board members have been more cautious about the future of the warehouse.

Commissioner Timothy Schneider, R-Streamwood, said the facility has raised "a red flag" for him since at least 2008, when the county bypassed a lower bid for a contract to repave the parking lot at Hawthorne in favor of Infrastructure Engineering, a company that had made campaign donations to former board President Todd Stroger. That contract eventually was rescinded in the face of criticism.

Still, Schneider said the county already has made substantial investments to building out the warehouse, and it might not make sense to walk away. "What we need is a better big-picture understanding of our needs across county government," he said.

And Commissioner John Daley, D-Chicago, said the long-term fix will likely involve persuading state lawmakers to let Brown and other officeholders keep more files electronically.

"But one of the problems, I know, concerns the clerk of the Circuit Court, and whether or not we would have to go to Springfield, which I believe we would, to change the volume of record-keeping she has to maintain according to state law," Daley said.

But Tobolski likened fixing up the warehouse to "rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic. It's just not going to matter. And this building, even when we finish it, is just going to continue to cost us money."

Brown said she plans to keep working with county officials. "We obviously need a place to store these records," said Brown spokeswoman Yvonne Davila.